Archaeologists have begun to piece together the story of a mysterious massacre more than 4,000 years ago in the former royal city of Mendes, which flourished for 20 centuries on a low mound overlooking the green fields and papyrus marshes of the Nile delta north of Cairo.
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There is no obvious indicator of how the victims died. They may have been knifed, or poisoned, or smothered. There are no bludgeon marks on the surviving skeletons. The bodies were casually thrown in, one on top of another. The temple had been rebuilt somewhere between 2150 and 1950BC. The implication is that the mysterious murders must date from the collapse of the Old Kingdom, or the turbulence between 2250BC and 2150BC.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:20 AM  |